She has been off the silver screen for over 60 years, so don’t be too hard on yourselves if our questions about the singing star of the 1930s and 40s stumped you. After reading this, by all means take a peek at our previous DD blogs (Need To Know Deanna Durbin and Deanna Durbin – Rival to Judy, Nov. 10-11, 2011).

Answer: She now resides in (4), a small town north of Paris. Like another classic movie doyenne, Deanna prefers lives quietly far from the limelight, and wants be left alone.

D) Question: Did she ever win an Academy Award? 1) No, but was nominated several times; 2) Yes; or 3) Yes, but it was shared.

Answer: If you chose No. 3, congratulate yourself. Deanna won the best the Academy Award’s 1939 Best Juvenile Award, which she shared with Mickey Rooney.

E) Question: She made over 20 films and shorts in her 12-year career, yet only one film was in color. Which one?

Answer: 1944′s Can’t Help Singing, which costarred Robert Paige and one of our very favorite character actors, Akim Tamiroff. Deanna plays a politician’s daughter in this western romance with music who follows her boyfriend West during the California gold rush.

F) Question: Was Deanna the voice for Walt Disney’s Snow White?

Answer: Durbin auditioned as the voice of the Snow White in 1937′s animation classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, but Walt Disney turned her down because she sounded too mature. She was a teenager at the time.

G) Question: On which radio program was Deanna a regular feature? 1) The Charlie McCarthy Show (with Edgar Bergen); 2) Allen’s Alley with Fred Allen; 3) The Jack Benny Program; or 4) The Eddie Cantor Show.

Answer: Deanna spent two years on Eddie Cantor’s radio show, making her debut in September 1936. She was, incidentally, a big hit.

Answer: It was a star-fan thing. Durbin was the Holocaust victim’s favorite movie star. Frank adorned her secret Amsterdam hiding nook with photos of Deanna. If you visit the Frank house you will still see a photo on the wall.

I ) Question: Who gave her her first screen kiss? In what movie? And why was it front page news?

Answer: It was Robert Stack in his 1939 movie debut in First Love, who provided Deanna with her first onscreen kiss. As to why this event commanded front page attention, it musta been a slow news day. Says Joe: It was a big deal because it was.

J) Question: In what novel does a character claim to have seen a Deanna Durbin film seven times, only he can’t remember which film?

Answer: Trout Fishing In America by Richard Brautigan.

K) Question: Durbin appealed to several key World War II figures who considered her their favorite star. Who are they? 1) Dwight Eisenhower, 2) Albert Speer; 3) Benito Mussolini; 4) Douglas MacArthur; or 5) Winston Churchill.

Answer: Mussolini and Churchill were nuts about Deanna, and MacArthur admired her work as well. Cannot vouch for Speer, however.

1 Comment

Enjoyed your quiz on Deanna, guys. But don’t forget that even before her first onscreen kiss in FIRST LOVE made headlines, there was almost as big a furor over Universal’s advertising her first 1939 release, THREE SMART GIRLS GROW UP, as her first “Glamorous” role.

Even THE NEW YORK TIMES took Universal to task for doing so, in the following special editorial:

A UNIVERSAL ERROR ABOUT GLAMOUR

With Special Reference to the Appeal of Deanna Durbin

By Frank S. Nugent

Spring seems to be a little late this year, so until it arrives we’ll have to get along with Deanna Durbin, the closest thing to this side of the equinox. A couple of books could be written on Miss Durbin’s singular appeal, but none of them would contain the horrible epithet Universal’s advertising staff fastened on the miss last week.

“Glamorous” was the word they dared employ and we haven’t said a civil word to Universal since. It doesn’t matter how the dictionary defines it–some literal poppycock about “a charm or enchantment working on the vision and causing things to seem different from what they are.”

We know what Hollywood means by glamour and we won’t have our Deanna playing in the same category as Hedy, Marlene, Greta, Joan, Carole, Loretta, Merle and Tyrone.

Glamour indeed! As if it had not been her very freedom from glamour, Hollywood style, that has endeared her to her millions. Glamour! as if that were a quality more precious than the freshness, the gay vitality, the artful artlessness and youthful radiance she has brought to the screen!

Glamour! as if that were what we wanted of the perfect kid sister (not that there really ever was one). Glamour forsooth! and was it glamour that made Judge Hardy and his brood, or glamour we found in the late Marie Dressler and Will Rogers, or glamour in Mr. Deeds or Zola or Pasteur, or glamour for that matter (though we hate to mention it) which keeps little Mistress Temple as the nation’s four time box office champion? What is this thing, glamour, anyway, that it has grown so great?

Deanna, to put an end to the libel, is not the least bit glamorous in her latest delight “Three Smart Girls Grow Up,” and she has not grown up so much herself. She leaves that, and the romantic troubles, to the older sisters, contenting herself with being the matrimonial broker of the family. Usually we dread these Little-Miss-Fixit roles. The brats are all so superior about it all and so right–like George Arlis as Disraeli or somebody. But Deanna manages to make even a half-grown meddler attractive. She is guilty of the most awful —blunders; she quite forgets her manners; she sulks and has tantrums when her plans go agley; and eventually she has to call on father.

And that, of course, is the way it should be, and would be unless the Miss Fix It had been Shirley Temple. No, Deanna is all right, up to par or better, and when Universal next says ‘G…..r’ it had better smile.